Economics Nobel to Claudia Goldin for shedding light on gender pay gap
Goldin (77), who in 1990 became the
first woman to be tenured at Harvard's economics department, is only the third
woman to win the prize, and the first to win it solo rather than sharing it
Hails Prize But Says Women Still
Face Huge Inequalities At Work
According
to Media thru NYT sources,
The
Nobel Memorial Prize In Economic
Sciences was awarded on Monday to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor for
advancing the world's understanding of wo- men's progress in the workforce,
Goldin is the third woman to have won the economics Nobel, which was first
awarded in 1969, and the first one to be ho- noured with it solo rather than
sharing in the prize. Goldin, 77, is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at
Harvard University. She has long been atrailblazer in the field-she was the
first woman to be offered tenure in Harvard's economics department, in 1989.
Goldin
saw a woman win ning the economics award on her own as a sort of "culmina-
tion" after years of "important changes" toward more gender
diversity in the field. She hai led the decision as "an award for big
ideas and for long term change". But added, "there are still large
differences between women and men in terms of what they do, how they're remunerated
and so on."
Goldin's
1990 book "Under- standing the Gender Gap: An Economic History of Ameri-
can Women" was a hugely influential examination of the roots of wage
inequality. She has followed up with studies on the impact of the contraceptive
pill on women's career and marriage decisions, women's surnames after marriage
as a social indicator and the rea sons why women are now the majority of
undergraduates.
The
Nobel committee praised Goldin for her research in to female employment, which
showed that employment among married women decreased in the 1800s, as the econo
my moved away from agricultural and toward industry Women's participation then
increased in the 1900s, as the service sector began to expand as a part of the
economy She also illustrated that the process of closing the gender wage gap
has been uneven over the cour se of history Recently progress in closing it has
been halting: Today women in the US make a little over 80 cents for eve ry
dollar a man makes. In the past, gender wage gaps could be explained by
education and own that most of the earnings difference is now between men and
women in the same jobs, the Nobel committee said. Notably, it kicks in after
the birth of a woman's first child.
Goldin
has attributed the gap to factors ranging from outright discrimination to phenomena
such as "greedy work", a term she coined for jobs that pay
disproportionately more per hour when someone works longer or has less cont rol
over those hours effectively penalising
women who need to seek flexible labour.
Goldin
said she hoped people would take away from her work how important long-term
changes are to understanding the labour market. "We see a residue of
history around us," she said, explaining that societal and family
structures that women and men grow up in shape their behaviour and economic
outcomes. While there has been "monumental progressive change, at the same
time there are important diffe rences," she said, and those differences
often tie back to wom en doing more work at home. "We're never going to
have gender equality until we also have couple equity" As per the NYT media
sources.
